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MI5 Chief Ken McCallum Says Iran Targets UK Military Sites, RAF Fairford Plot Not Unique

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Iran targeting UK military sites; RAF Fairford plot not unique. IRGC highly likely directed the Fairford incident; UK to impose sanctions.

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MI5 Chief Ken McCallum Says Iran Targets UK Military Sites, RAF Fairford Plot Not Unique
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MI5 flags Iran shift

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum said Iran is trying to hit military sites in the United Kingdom and warned that the suspected plot at RAF Fairford is “not unique.” McCallum told an annual Threats to Britain speech that “a major shift this year has been Iranian ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Parliament on Monday that the suspected plot was “almost certainly directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.”

“The incident at RAF Fairford ‘is not unique.”
ABC News

Investigators later found a quantity of an accelerant, gasoline, in three vans at the RAF Fairford site, and police said they found no explosives. British authorities linked the incident to Iran, and the United States pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford after the episode.

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Image: @BBNTimes_en
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Tehran rejects blame

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the United Kingdom’s attribution of the Fairford incident to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and called it “an ugly plot.” The ministry said Britain had failed to provide sufficient evidence and rejected the accusations of Iranian involvement as a “clumsy false flag operation.” British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said investigators assessed the coordinator to be a known individual based in Iran, while she did not name that person or disclose supporting communications, financial records or other intelligence.

Benjamin Netanyahu said his administration warned the UK about a plot, telling Fox News: “We gave the Brits the intel that there was going to be an attack, and it’s an Iranian-sponsored attack.” McCallum argued that Iran’s targeting is part of a broader pattern, saying the Fairford incident “is not the only one of its kind.”

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AI and hybrid risk

McCallum warned that artificial intelligence is “supercharging” the cybersecurity contest between attackers and defenders and said MI5 has set up a new AI Threat Assessment Center. McCallum said “AI’s potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons” is a key concern, and he said terror groups “would dearly love” to have chemical, biological or radiological weapons. McCallum said state threats have quadrupled in the past decade, and he said MI5’s work countering state threats has quadrupled in that period.

The BBC reported that MI5 said there had been 50 arrests in the last year over Iran-linked activities, with much of the aggression aimed at Jewish communities and “harder targets, like military sites.” Burnham’s assessment that the Fairford plot was coordinated from inside Iran and directed by the IRGC, alongside Iran’s denial and demand for evidence, left the incident’s attribution contested while MI5 continued to frame Iran as expanding hybrid campaigns in Britain.

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